The History of Peugeot Company

The Peugeot brand is one of the most popular car brands in the market today and has been in existence for many years now. The company based in France is the second larges car manufacturer in Europe. However, the manufacture of cars was not the first product. The company was first founded in 1810 as a coffee mill business. Then, in 1830, they started producing bicycles before finally settling on the production of cars. In between the coffee grinders and the bicycles there were also other businesses that the family owned Peugeot brand engaged in as well. As the revolution progressed in the eighteenth century the need for transportation also rose and it is at this time that Peugeot brand started to engage in the manufacture of cars. The popular trademark with the lion was registered by Emile Peugeot on the 20th of November, 1858.

Peugeot Type 19 - One of the first cars. This image is from the public domain. Photographer: Eigenes Werk.

When Armand Peugeot, a member of the Peugeot family met Gottlieb Daimler he became interested in the manufacture of cars which resulted in the production of a steam run three wheeled car. This was the first Peugeot car and was manufactured in 1889 (only four cars were built), which later was upgraded to a car that was four wheeled, run on petrol and had an engine that was licensed by Daimler. As the years went by, the need for the cars produced by Peugeot grew due to the number of innovations that the car manufacturer continued to introduce in the market.
The year 1896 saw the car manufacturer break from the family company and be registered under a new name that only concentrated in Peugeot cars. Furthermore, they also started manufacturing the car engines on their own which had a horse power of eight which saw the rise in the sales of the cars within the same year. In this time the Peugeot car was also involved in car racing which made it quite successful because of an upgraded engine.
In the beginning of the First World War, the car brand was involved in the manufacture of military vehicles as well as the making of arms, but as soon as the war was over they continued with the production of saloon cars. Now that the war was over many people viewed cars as essential which resulted in the rise in sales of the Peugeot car brand, which also saw the introduction of models such as 201 and another one in 1933 that had an aerodynamic appearance that was meant to entice customers to buy the cars despite the depression.
Nevertheless, the Second World War proved to be a major setback for the Peugeot brand as their operations stalled so that they could manufacture weapons as well as cars for the Germans. Furthermore, their factories were destroyed which lead to delays until 1948 when they produced the 203 Peugeot model. From here the car brand continued rising in sales as other models known as Pininfarina which were Italian based also formed part of the cars being manufactured. Later, Renault and Volvo also joined the success train that Peugeot had began, then Citroen much later in 1974 with the purchase of thirty percent of its stake by the car brand.

Peugeot Hoggar

The 1980’s saw the Peugeot brand purchase a division of Chrysler which turned to be a bad decision leading to the sale of most of the models that were manufactured in that time period. The reason for low sales in this time was because the facilities as well as machineries purchased from Chrysler were faulty and old. The 1980’s saw the Peugeot brand gain back some of its glory and this has steadily grown with more luxurious models being manufactured to meet the needs of their customers. Some of the most notable successes of Peugeot Company are the use of these cars in prestigious rallies such as Formula One and have resulted in increased sales worldwide.